Ghrelin is a hormone produced in the stomach that appears to stimulate appetite. A recent paper in Cell Metabolism shows that giving ghrelin to volunteers made their brains respond more strongly to food images, reward systems in the brain b…

The claim about viability is not about whether or not premature infants at 21 or 22 or 23 weeks do survive, it is about whether they can survive, (if all medical care were available, and the doctors tried hard to keep them alive). The Londo…

A recent study reveals that aviation might pump 20% more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2025 as previously estimated. Vexing is not the possibly underestimated figure; but the fact that this study was only recently uncovered: As cove…

Often the source of our worries about eating animals and the basis of arguments against it seems to turn on the pain and suffering of the animal in question. With advances in biotechnology such as cloning and genetic manipulation it may at …

Big Brother, it seems, has been asleep on the job.  Even though it is said that we in the UK are more subject to surveillance than any other society, peered at by cameras wherever we go about our innocent business, today’s headlines te…

In the Scotsman this week there is an interview with a scientist who has claimed that a loophole in the draft UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is likely to lead to the creation of hybrid human-apes or “humanzees”. In essence this…

The US Congress today passed legislation banning the use of genetic information by insurance companies, unions and employers. As Dominic Wilkinson noted in his post on 26 April, this legislation might have interesting implications for profe…

Controversy has erupted around whether experiments to test artificial blood should stop. Experimental blood substitutes raised the risk of heart attack and death, yet U.S. regulators allowed human testing to continue despite warning signs, …

Stuart Rennie writes a thoughtful blog on bioethics.net, Can you buy changes in health behaviours? on how the World Bank backs an anti-AIDS experiment paying young people to not contract sexually transmitted infections. The basic idea is no…

There are several possible solutions to genetic discrimination in sport. Legislation, like that passed this week in the US could be used to prevent clubs from using genetic screening in recruitment. However that would still allow clubs to d…